5/26/2018

Fine. I'll admit right away, this pair is the latest addition to the Box of Socks.

When I was planning on making a box of socks, I paired up green yarns from my stash with sock patterns from my Ravelry library that I've been meaning to knit for quite some time. Now it was time to cast on with this lovely Miss Babs Tarte prize yarn from my Tour de Sock winnings from few years ago.

The yarn was an interesting one. It had the usual merino and nylon - but also a bit of tencel. The internet tells me tencel is an ecological fibre made out of eukalyptus trees. Some years ago, I tried spinning with 50/50 merino/tencel and hated every second of it as the fibre kept on breaking constantly. It was much nicer to work with tencel yarn someone else had spun.

The yarn felt a bit too cottonlike for my taste but otherwise it was nice. Tencel gave it a really pretty sheen but the best thing about the yarn are these colors. Usually, I'm more into subtle semisolids but the play of greens and blues is gorgeous.

The sock pattern is one I've been drooling over for years but only now found the time to cast on. The socks were knitted cuff down and all the exciting things happened right away. The socks have a really beautiful leaf pattern I couldn't put down before finishing the chart. And before that, there were a bunch of rows with wrapped stitches.

Wrapping stitches can be quite fun but one must remember to be careful not to wrap too thight. I remember to keep the yarn loose while wrapping but made the mistake of knitting the wrapped stitches so thight that it thightened the wrapping yarn as well. Duh... So I ended up with socks that are a bit too tight at the calves. Luckily, these won't go to my sock drawer but to someone with slightly slimmer legs.

Once you get pass the leaf patterns, there's just stockinette stitch on the sole and some twisted ribbing. Very relaxed. I modified the pattern such that I continued the twisted ribbing all the way to the tip of the toes.

These socks were fun and entertaining to knit. I can highly recommend the pattern. And the Box is starting to look like something - though I still have many pairs to knit.

5/16/2018

This spring, I had the honor of designing the pre-KAL shawl for this year's Jyväskylä summer knit fest. The idea is that because it's so hard to wait for the festival to begin in July, there's a KAL to help take the edge of waiting. And this time, I got to design the shawl pattern for the KAL.

The pre-fest KAL works such that when you buy yarn for the shawl from TitiTyy, you get the pattern. This time, they chose TitiTyy's very own Tukuwool Fingering - one of my favorite yarns. It took with me a couple skeins of Runo and Ujo and started sketching.

I wanted to design something relaxed yet flamboyant for the yarn. The pattern has to have enough to keep the knitting interesting but still remain a relaxing project. Tukuwool is such an airy yarn that I started to think brioche.

I love working with brioche and garter stitch which it is often paired with. However, I don't like how usually garter stitch next to brioche is worked such that the color changes on every row. It makes the colors all mixed up and muddy. I wanted to design a shawl with brioche and more traditional two row stripes in garter stitch. This way, the shawl turned out quite graphic: the garter stitch makes horizontal stripes while the brioche makes vertical stripes.

The shawl is an asymmetric triangle. You start knitting at the sharp top corner and increase the stitches a little at a time. Once the shawl body is big enough, you will pick up stitches from the bottom edges and work a brioche chevron edging.

I really, really like the outcome. And this is a design that will work well with many different kind of color combinations. I myself tend to go for these powdery, muted combos but the graphical stripes of this shawl would look really good in high contrast as well.

So hop on board the KAL. You can get the pattern with the yarn from TitiTyyä (or from my Ravelry shop once the festival is over) and here is the KAL chatter thread where you can talk about your color choices, oh and ah over all the lovely shawls or ask for help. Use the hashtag #jklknitfesthaikukal on social media and come to the festival with your shawl for the group photo!